New research bolsters the theory that a prehistoric adolescent was mauled by a wild animal—likely a bear—in what is now Italy tens of thousands of years ago.
In 1942, the remains of a young adult dating back to between 27,900 and 27,300 years ago came to light in Arene Candide Cave in Liguria, Italy. The grave goods discovered alongside the skeletal remains earned the individual the nickname “Il Principe,” meaning “The Prince,” but the person is known for more than their funerary possessions. An incomplete mandible and left clavicle suggest that The Prince had been viciously injured by a large animal. In a new study published last year in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences, researchers add new evidence to this hypothesis.
Pain, pain, and more pain
“Despite ample evidence that Paleolithic humans hunted large and dangerous carnivores, such as lions, leopards, and bears, skeletal evidence of negative interactions with wild fauna is extremely rare in the Homo sapiens paleobiological record. To date, the only individual for whom an animal attack has been hypothesized based on their pattern of traumatic lesions is the Gravettian adolescent,” the team wrote in the paper. “Gravettian” refers to a prehistoric culture that existed in Europe from around 28,000 to 19,000 years ago.
According to the researchers, however, no one has sufficiently studied this theory. As such, the team reinvestigated the previously noted injuries, verifying that the individual experienced the mandibular and shoulder injuries while alive or immediately after dying. They also looked for more signs of what might have caused the person’s death, finding possible fractures in the teeth, skull, and possibly even the neck. Yikes.
“Additional perimortem trauma, including a linear marking on the left parietal and a puncture mark in the fibula, supports the hypothesis of animal mauling,” wrote the team, including Vitale Stefano Sparacello from the University of Cagliari. “Given the overall traumatic pattern, a bear attack…remains the most plausible explanation.”
If true, this would make The Prince fossil the oldest known example of a modern human killed by a wild animal, and possibly the earliest evidence of a fatal bear attack in human history.
Nope, he didn’t just fall
The poor individual had also injured his left little toe and a bone in his right ankle. This strengthens the theory that injuries to the prehistoric foragers’ lower limbs eventually proved to be deadly. I’d imagine that foot injuries would make one’s already bleak chances of surviving a bear attack even bleaker. To make matters even worse, their results indicate that The Prince outlived his injuries for a limited number of days (couldn’t the beast at least have finished them off?).
They noted that other potential explanations for the clearest injuries, including human-inflicted violence or a big fall, “are either lacking or appear less parsimonious. In fact, the [Prince] does not display other lesions that would be expected in a fall, such as forearm and leg fractures, and neither falls nor interpersonal violence would explain the marks attributed to carnivore activity and the apparent loss of bone tissue in the shoulder and mandible,” they explained.
At the very least, they departed for whatever afterlife they believed in with style. “The violent event and the long agony may have been reflected in the elaborate burial, following the presumed Gravettian use of formally burying exceptional individuals and exceptional events.”
